Images

The all black Leaf-Cutter, Megachile xylocopoides, this one found in Florida. The species is found in the East and seems to be gradually invading its way to the North...Picture by Amber Reese and photoshopping by Dejen Mengis.

As you can see from the tattered edges of the wings...this is an old bee, meaning it has been out and about for about 5 weeks. This is also a male, one could count the antennal segments (13 in males, 12 in females) but you can also tell by the greatly expanded white front legs, these are used to cover the females eyes during mating....

Megachile poeyi, Cuba, GTMO, June 2011

Melecta pacifica. A new state record for Maryland...captured right outside my Laboratory's front lawn! A few days ago I was watching and collecting bees out of a lovely clay filled bare patch of soil that refuses to grow any grass and is thus a lovely colony of all sorts of interesting nesting bees, wasps, and ants.

Meliplebeia beccarii. This is a tiny little stingless colonial bee from Kruger National Park. So small and ubiquitous on tree flowers that we called them "bee dust". Found on an expedition with Jonathan Mawdsley and James Harrison. One of the many creatures that make up the trillions and trillions of pollinators that work for free. We are so lucky.

More Leaf-cutters from South Texas from my recent trip. Here is Megachile policaris. Big, found on Sunflowers alone roadsides, Note the big cutting tooth on its mandibles used to cut leaves to line its nests. A particularly trim species with nice sharp lines of bright white hairs along the rims of the abdomen.

Some rather bad pictures of M. pugnata males. Not sure why I selected this specimen. Terrible hair. But, anyway check out the large expanded front tarsi. Will have to get additional specimens. Collected in WV by Dave Smith who had fabulous numbers of specimens in malaise samples. Still going through them after 10 years.

Megachile relativa. Pretty ubiquitous in North America though it appears to be absent from most of the Midwest. The orange pollen carrying hairs on the underside of the abdomen narrow things down in terms of the various Megachile species, bug there are a few species that look very similar....particularly the introduced Megachile centuncularis.

Megachile relativa. Pretty ubiquitous in North America though it appears to be absent from most of the Midwest. The orange pollen carrying hairs on the underside of the abdomen narrow things down in terms of the various Megachile species, bug there are a few species that look very similar....particularly the introduced Megachile centuncularis.

Collected by Heather Campbell in the sandhils of North Caroline (Moore County) here is a relatively uncommon bee of the sandy areas of the Deep South. Picture by Colby Francouer. Photography Information: Canon Mark II 5D, Zerene Stacker, Stackshot Sled, 65mm Canon MP-E 1-5X macro lens, Twin Macro Flash in Styrofoam Cooler, F5.0, ISO 100, Shutter Speed 200.

An introduced species that is so large and tough but it can evict Xylocopa virginica, the Carpenter bee, out of its nest by a combination of smearing it with resin and stinging it to death. Picture taken by Heagan Ahmed in Photoshop to buy Dejen Mengis.

White boots on this, our darkest Eastern Melissodes. The most common species, found in gardens as well as parklands. Uses quite a range of plants compared to the more composite oriented other species. Photography by Kelly Graninger.

From the tip of Florida comes Melissodes communis. As a whole, Melissodes is almost always a composite specialist of some kind. This species is found very commonly throughout the South and this particular specimen comes from Biscayne National Park at the tip of Florida. Picture by Sierra Williams and Shopping by Elizabeth Garcia.

Melissodes communis, Biscayne National Park, Florida

Ironweed specialist. Well at least the female is a specialist in that she feeds here babies the bright white pollen of this group of plants. If you plant Ironweed in your garden Melissodes denticulatus will show up they are that common (ironweed is common too).

Range Jumper. This range jumper jumped from Illinois to Virginia. There are no records in between. How odd....this is a rare bee in its limited range in the Midwest and to find it all the way in the Mountains of Virginia seems near fantastical, but there it is and more than one specimen too.

A bee I often associate with Sandy areas...this one captured on Cape Cod National Seashore as part of comparative studies of dune loving bees.

This bee is part of a taxonomic mystery spanning the continent. It turns out that the male of this species is very likely named as O. trevoris, by a long ago taxonomist., All specimens were thought to be limited to the West, but....there were these strange Osmia around the Great Lakes that were sometimes called (incorrectly it now seems) O.

This bee is part of a taxonomic mystery spanning the continent. It turns out that the male of this species is very likely named as O. trevoris, by a long ago taxonomist., All specimens were thought to be limited to the West, but....there were these strange Osmia around the Great Lakes that were sometimes called (incorrectly it now seems) O.

Taxonomy and Discovery. One would expect based on what we know about things like plants and birds, that we would largely have figured out what species of bees exist in the Eastern United States...Not so, still much to do for the students of bees.

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